Post subject: Setting up camera access from the internet...... for dummies

Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 3:31 pm

Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:35 pmPosts: 74

Hi,
I haven't used the server features of CamUinversal before unitl now. I am just begining to explorer the possibilities. I have set up my 4 cameras on my home network; video server and clients seem to be OK. I can view all my cameras on each of my two PC's. CamUniversal did crash a lot, creating error reports to microsoft, unitl I set a fixed video server IP address. Or maybe it was something else.

I also tried the webserver and this too seemed to be OK. I can access the cameras via my browser using the supplied sample cam_control.htm file.

I have my own website and would like to access my cameras from there if possible. I suspect its not as simple as putting the cam_control.htm page there. What is required to do this?

Also,
I set my main PC as video server with a fixed IP address. When I set this up I did it from Network connection>>LAN>>>properties>>Internet protocol TCP/IP>>properties and then set an IP address outside the DHCP range of my router. But....what should I put for the DNS server addresses? I have at the moment the same IP address as the default gateway but I noticed that there are DNS addresses mentioned on the link status page for the router. Should I use these instead? Also on this page there is also a default gateway IP address but its not the same as the on LAN setup page for the router!!

It's really easy. You start on one PC the server first. This server has his own IP address which is shown in the settings dialog. It could be, that your PC has several network adapters and you want to use a different one as CamUniversal has choosen for you, so there is the possibility to select a different one with the "Use this IP address" checkbox.
Now your server is running with it's IP.

If this IP is always static and never changes, we only need to know this IP. This is mostly the case in your LAN. But what happens if your PC is connected to the Internet and gets every day or every login a new IP address from your ISP? Then you need a DNS (domain name service). With this service IP addresses and domain names are assigned together, so that each domain name has one assigned IP address and this IP address has the domain name assigned. You don't need to know the IP address because you know the domain name, like www.google.com.

With the DNS option you can insert the domain name for your server PC instead of the IP address. In the future you don't worry if the IP changes, because the domain name is always assigned to the current IP. You can buy for such an domain name with a static IP, or can can use the free service http://www.dyndns.com/ .

In the video client options you insert the IP or the DNS name!
DNS is only useful if you want to use the video network functionality outside your LAN!
"Webserver"

Setting up the webserver is very easy too. In the settings dialog you can select a different IP address if you want (described above). Then select a port (80) and start the webserver. With the included sample pages you have already accessed CamUniversal. If you want to use the webserver not only in your LAN, but from the Internet you can have a look at: http://www.crazypixels.com/camuni-cam.htm. I have done this.
Now you have the problem of the changing IP address of the PC which accesses the Internet and runs CamUniversal. So it's time for DNS. I have created my own dynamic domain name at www.dyndns.com. If you view the source of my live cam webpage you can see the domain name at the place for the IP address.

After you have created your own dynamic domain name you have to do 2
things:
- install a program which reports your IP address to www.dyndns.com each time it changes. This is needed, so that dyndns.com can assign your IP to your domain name
(there are several freeware programs available which do this)
- open your router, so that the IP address of your PC could be accessed from outside

My PC now has a fixed IP in my LAN.
I set up an account and host name at dynDNS.com
Installed updater software.
I set up port forwarding (virtual server) on my router to my PC.
I set ports up in CamUniversal webserver.

I can recieve images if I use the internal IP address of the PC but not if I use the external IP or dynDNS alias.

I disabled my firewall but still no joy.
I tried port triggering as well as virtual server.
I tried lots of different ports as well as the usual ones 80, 8080. Still no luck

The only thing I can think of now is that my ISP blocks this sort of thing or for testing I have to use a PC that is not directly connected to my home network. I read somewhere that loopback could be a problem when using the dyn alias while still inside my network. Could this be my problem?

I think either my ISP is blocking me using a server or my work PC is blocking my access and I have a loopack problem when testing from within my LAN. I will try to find another network from which to test the webserver.

The problems were due to issues with loopback when testing from the PC's on the same network as the webserver and also restrictions on what ports I can use.

Is it possible to password protect access to the camera, webserver?. If its not available could it be added to CamUniversal? I only want to use the webserver for myself and do not want all cameras publicly accessible.

I know I could but the URL on a protected page but this doesn't actually stop the URL from working!

If you have choosen to activate/deactivate the remote control by password you have to do this with the following 2 commands:
http://<ip>:<port>/activate_remote_control=password (activates the remote control)
http://<ip>:<port>/deactivate_remote_control=password (deactivates the remote control)

Just send these 2 http requests to activate or deactivate the protection. The decision of you want to protect the viewing or only the camera functions is done in the webserver dialog!

See PortForward.com for very useful FAQ's on router setup, port forwarding, static IP for PC etc.

These things sound complicated at first but are not so hard when you get past the jargon.

Some pitfalls:

When testing I found that some ports are blocked eg by the ISP or work network security. Can be frustrating when you are not sure if you have everything is setup correctly.

Testing the webserver from home was not possible for me due to loopback issues. Also frustrating unless you have a friendly neighbour.

I found I was getting DNS lookup errors from my browser until I omitted the www part of the URL. Then it worked. I've no idea why this causes a problem but it did.

Other useful, not too difficult and free possibilities:

Remotely turn on, shutdown, reboot a computer. See Google.

Remote control a PC. See Google.

Some routers can be setup to update the dynamic DNS service directly instead of installing an updater client on the PC. This means the computer doesn't have to be always on to keep the IP for the dynamic DNS service up to date.